Because reality is beautiful.

Brain droppings

So, today my random ramblings. First, off the progress report: We have left our apartment and are in a snazzy hotel (payed for by my employer) as we wait this last two days for the plane.

We went to our favorite restuarant in town, the Mellow Mushroom and had another one of their truly fantastic pizzas. The MM has been one of the few silver linings around the clouds down here.

I am writing this not from my big Ubuntu equipped desktop but my itty-bitty Linpus distro laptop, an Acer Aspire One. I seriously love this computer. We bought it to because we our big desktop will be in transit to Germany for about three months, and we wanted to have the option of still checking our mail. It has absolutely beat all expectations.

Saw the news about the Chevy Volt. Doesn’t look special anymore and now price has gone up 25%. I betting it goes up another 5-15% before it sells. And still no firm supplier for the battery pack, which is the foundation of the whole thing.

The US economy is continuing to roll down hill. I predicted this one two. If the neighbor hood bank is giving away money, then the big players are giving it out. If the big players are giving it out, the supplier is moving it in bulk. 4 years ago my wife and I, desperately broke, were looking for anyway possible to save money. We looked into a getting a house instead of renting an apartment. The bank offered us $75,000 based of off my $14,000 per annum income, with no down payment. I said “Absolutely not,” and began to worry about the coming bubble pop.

I finished the book The Persian Puzzle. It takes foreign policy apart and explains it. Its sort of like a deconstruction of spam: fascinating but not appetizing. One of the things that concerned me was the lack of cooperation between the president and the cabinet on foreign policy.

Which made me wonder if it wouldn’t be better to set up the government like this:

The president and cabinet are all elected en mass, the way parliamentary democracies elect a government, but by Schulze method.

Similar methods are applied at state level. At the county level, a single Schulze method vote could be applied. The final administrative unit would the Cell, which would be 16 or so city blocks.

The Federal government would be restricted to the tasks of creating standards such as the width of roads and the frequency of channels etc. They would also be required to enforce these standards through then existing alphabet soup of FCC, FDA, etc. They would also keep the military.

The State governments would be responsible for administering the standards and would be responsible for disaster response, and keep the National Guard

The county would be responsible for welfare, so welfare could be adjusted to local standards of living, with help from the state available to poor counties, to provide short term welfare, and long term economic improvement.

The Cells would get money from the county (they can’t tax or spend, only enforce policy and social will.) The cells only job is to provide direct democracy at an administrative level where it can work, and to follow federal and state zoning standards which would require proportional representation of jobs and housing costs. (IE if 10% of the population is impoverished, then 10% of the available housing must be at there income level. If 10% of people work for $6.00 an hour, then 10% of the employers in the cell must pay that wage, or not be allowed to do business there.